Question to International press: How many dead Venezuelans equal one arrested US citizen?

I wrote to the UK Guardian yesterday asking why the relatives of the nine government supporters allegedly killed by Capriles supporters in Venezuela have been ignored. In contrast, international journalists immediately interviewed friends and family of a US citizen who was just arrested in Venezuela.

It mentions that a US citizen is arrested, not killed, just arrested. We are given his name, details about him, and told that his family and a friend were interviewed by AP.

None of the nine people the government says were killed in political violence are named. No mention of any foreign correspondents talking to relatives. It is all left at the vague level of he said, she said. If any effort was taken by Watts or Lopez to independently investigate any of the deaths, interview relatives, they kept it very secret.

Filmmaker Edward Ellis is a rare example of a foreigner in Venezuela who made the effort to investigate opposition violence in Venezuela. You may recall that a petition, signed by Noam Chomsky and many others, was published in the Guardian a few years ago.

It asked why the Guardian (for many years) failed to report the murders of hundreds of Chavista peasants. A few months after the petition was published the Guardian allowed Ellis to talk about the issue in an op-ed.

That was welcome of course, but it seems that the Guardian has learned no long term lesson from any of that.

Joe Emersberger

PS: Here is a list of the victims the government has named that includes